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The Politics of Early Medieval Monumentality

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The Politics of Early Medieval Monumentality This is a repository copy of Why that? Why there? Why then? The politics of early medieval monumentality. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/1192/ Book Section: Carver, Martin orcid.org/0000-0002-7981-5741 (2001) Why that? Why there? Why then? The politics of early medieval monumentality. In: Hamerow, H., (ed.) Image and Power in the Archaeology of Early Medieval Britain: Essays in honour of Rosemary Cramp. Oxbow Books , Oxford, UK , pp. 1-22. Reuse Items deposited in White Rose Research Online are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved unless indicated otherwise. They may be downloaded and/or printed for private study, or other acts as permitted by national copyright laws. The publisher or other rights holders may allow further reproduction and re-use of the full text version. This is indicated by the licence information on the White Rose Research Online record for the item. Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Why that? Why there? Why then? The Politics of Early Medieval Monumentality Marfin Carver The hypothesis presented in this paper has already appeared in various fragmentary forms (Carver 1986,1993,1998b), but has not hitherto been drawn together, so it is fitting that I should ky to do this in honour of my best teacher and most telling critic. After all, it would not do for Professor Cramp's Festschrift to be too burdened by flattering emulation; it should contain something exasperating as well. So I look forward to her leafing through these pages with growing despair, culminating in the tart response familiar from my carefree student days: 'really Mr Carver, I have no idea what you are talking about', meaning: 'actually, 1 know perfectly welI; you on the other hand ...' In brief, the hypothesis concerns the history of the early medieval period in north-west Europe and our ability to read it from archaeology, or more \ specifically from its major inves.tments such as burial mounds, churches, illuminated manuscripts and sculpture: the word 'monumentality' of my title is intended as shbrthand for aII these things. Confidence in the idea that monuments had (and have) a meaning beyond some vague celebration of an individual or propitiation of an unseen omnipotence has been growing among prehistorians (e.g. BradIey 1993), and is an accepted feature of the historic period. We know that monuments are more than passive memorials because written commentaries, poetry and inscriptions declare their active purposes for us. Monuments comprise the vocabulary of a politicaI language, fossilized b versions of arguments that were continuous and may Rave related more to , .what was desired than what had occurred (Carver 1993). At the same time, we need not suppose that the expression is necessarily so subtle, sceptical or to use a fashionable word, ironical, as to lose all hope of making equations between a socieiy and its ideas. That architecture, sculpture, burial mounds and brooches have messages beyond the functional which are dependant on their social, economic and above a11 their ideological context was never an issue: to understand their real meaning is the goal and the aim of each generation that Martin Carvw studies them. It is very likely that the motives .I attach to the construction of the monuments to be discussed are equally inadequate characterizations of the profound stresses that motivated and were concealed by their makers. That said, the monuments are what survive, and our story must temporarily keep the candle burning untiI their story can be told. Some assxlmptions The argument requires a number of assumptions to be declared. First, all archaeologists are obliged to acknowledge that whereas their efforts have the advantage of generating new evidence, there is never a good moment to argue from it; even newer evidence can quickly take the shine off too detaiIed a model. Reasoning from documents has the disadvantage that so few survive, but the advantage that no new sources are likely to appear suddenly in the midst of the six-year-long composition of a major synthesis. Archaeological reasoning and historical reasoning have naturally different rhythms, and the world is a more interesting place because of it. But, in order to offer a historically acceptable model, the archaeologist is oLliged to assume that it is legitimate to argue from the material culture we have; to assert that in certain matters, such as the occurrence of churches and burial mounds, the distribution will not now alter markedly: that what we have is not exactly what there was, but is an acceptable representation of what there was. Having declared this assumption, the archaeologist should be permitted to develop a model on evidence that is partial; the documentary evidence is partial too, but it is legitimate to afdempt to write history from it. ' A second assumption is that the repertoirgbf material culture at our disposal is heterogeneous and cannot be interpreted through a single theoretical exegesis. Not every object or site has an equal claim to be treated as intentionally expressive. If the Sutton Hoo mound 1 burial or the Lindisfarne Gospels can be seen as having agency, representing material culture in its active voice, there is no need to impute the same intentions to a spade or a spindle whorl. The old definition of a 'culture', pulled tlus way and that since Gordon ChiIde used it the preface to The Danube in Prehistory (19291, can be seen as neither all cultural, nor always seeking identity, status or affiliation, but multi-purposed, a set of different statements addressing different audiences or none. If economic information is incorporated in the layers of midden heap, political meaning is most likely to be embedded in sites and objects of high investment and public access. In our period, the prominent candidates are burial mounds, jewellery, churches, illuminated manuscripts and sculpture. These appear not only in a single place at successive times, but at the same time in different places. If assumption number 1 is tenable this variation has a meaning and was intended to have one. If the choice of the vehicle of expression is intentional, how far is it sui generis and how far is it owed to the emulation of the neighbours? This The Politics of Early Medieval Mdnumenfality 3 depends firstIy on whether the neighbours are visible, and the third assumption I make is that in early medieval, northern Europe they were. The Anglo-Saxons knew about the Romans, the Irish, the Picts, the British, the Franks, the Swedes, the Danes and the Norwegians at both a general and a personal level, and we can infer this both from books (Bede) and from graves (see, for example, Hines 1984). It is these contacts and the transmissions between them that allow us to suppose that the commissioners of seventh- century monuments could fish in a large reservoir of ideas. George Henderson invokes the broad range of stimuli available to the composers of the Book of Durrow in AD 680: 'Discrete national traits, in design, techruque and the selecba,of- motifs, came into conjunction in the peculiar, small-scale, packed circumstances of the British Lsles, with its ever-changmg political scene, under the constant cohesive influence of the internationally active Christian church, writing and speaking Latin to all ears' enderso son 1999,53). But .to these same people, the local traits of Scandinavia an$ Saxony were also visible or at least were known - the patterns on cremation urns, the wrist clasps and square- headed brooches which had been worn by East AngIian nobles. The bracteates or guldgubbe made in Fyn are sources for Insular Art potentially no more obscure than Coptic bowls or stamped Mediterranean pottery. So why were their ideas not recycled on the pages of the gospel books? The animals of the Sutton Hoo shoulder clasps and purse lid and of the Durrow carpet pages are links in the same technician's chain. But a great deal more of the Sutton Hoo menagerie, on helmet, sceptre, and sword was not adopted by the Christian artisans. Eastern Christian figurative art was known to the kings of East Anglia, as can be seen from a sixth-century bucket found in a field a few hundred metres north of Sutton Hoo (Mango et al. 1989). But it was not incorporated into the Sutton Hoo jewelIery. The point is an obvious one. The Anglo-Saxons were not 'eclectic' in the sense of taking motifs at random from some workshop floor or exotic street scene. They were not indiscriminately 'influenced' by things they had seen in the halls of Danish relatives or on trips to Rome. They were creative and seIective, not eclectic, but choosy. There was, potentially, a broad range of accessible options and since the different options were equally available, the choice which was actually made must have a meaning. The next assumption is that the repertoire of possible choices does not need to be contemporary; in other words the maker of expressive artefacts and monuments can also fish in the pool of the past. The metal-smiths of later Celtic Britain and IreIand can revive La The styles after an interval of 500 years, just as Roman motifs, lettering, ornament and pottery are reintroduced in seventh-century Northumbria, the courts of Offa and Charlemagne, the burh of Alfred, and in numerous subsequent renaissances (Carver 1993). It was recently argued that the notched shield seen on the St Andrews Sarcophagus derived from something last seen (so far as we are aware) in the Iron Age of southern Britain (Carver 1999a).
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